ObjectJun 21, 2023
Marie LeBlanc Flanagan

I’ve been working on this new zine "How Integers and Floats Work!" with Julia for the last 6 months and we’re DELIGHTED to send it out into the world today

Finally, an explanation of why 0.1 + 0.2 = 0.30000000000000004!!

And an explanation of the Deep Space Kraken videogame bug (your spaceship is destroyed when you go fast because computer math is weird)

https://wizardzines.com/zines/integers-floats

wizard zines

wizard zines
Jun 21, 2023 at 3:39pmWeb
Show threadpoetasterJun 21, 2023
@omarieclaire hmm. Sympy with precision 20 says: 0.30000000000000000000 ... Know what ya mean, but there are highet precision approaches from silicon up, or?
Show threadSandbenderJun 21, 2023
@poetaster @omarieclaire
I studied chip design and still work with it occasionally. To my knowledge there are no mainstream projects to develop hardware support for symbolic math. Floats are good enough for almost everything, and anything else can probably afford the overhead of doing it in software. I wouldn't be surprised if there's something in a lab somewhere for an aggressive application, but I'd be surprised to see anything in real life anytime soon. But I've been wrong before.
Show threadpoetasterJun 22, 2023
@sandbender sure, sympy is in softspace. I do some stuff with audio in arduino land. Mozzi lib. Own integer math. No fp. At all. I think fp belongs up higher.
Show threadSandbenderJun 23, 2023

@poetaster

For Arduino and other microcontroller stuff, that absolutely makes sense, you rarely need floats. But can you elaborate on fp belonging up higher? There's a lot of number crunching that needs the precision (as opposed to accuracy) of floats and the speed of hardware.

Show threadpoetasterJun 26, 2023
@sandbender sorry, overlooked your reply. I'm just stuck in a 'pre-fpu/alu' mindset. Started computing in the early 1980s and it wasn't standard till a decade later to have hardware floating point for machines I could afford. modern chips like the stm32 all have onboard fpus. But my first Macs, until the early 90s did not. Hence my still thinking of floating point as being userland software.
Show threadSandbenderJun 27, 2023

@poetaster Fair enough, I was in a similar mindset where FPUs were a nice-to-have until I had to do some low-level work with motion control where FPUs were absolutely essential.

Out of curiosity, anything you'd be willing to share about your Arduino audio projects? I've done a little of that myself.

Show threadpoetasterJun 28, 2023
@sandbender ah, the arduino stuff is mostly derivative. https://poetaster.de/synths there are links to the repos. Have a bunch of other machines, but nothing published.
rampart & keep

beware his flashing eyes, his flying hair!

Show threadpoetasterJun 22, 2023
My point was, work where?
Show threadEvan ProdromouJun 21, 2023
@omarieclaire @b0rk congratulations! I just got my copy. Can't wait to read it!
Show threadDennyJun 22, 2023
@omarieclaire That looks like a fun and interesting read!